


i'm far away (on my way back to your door)

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “Thanks, Nishimura,” Natsume says at some point on the walk home. He’s smiling, soft and sweet, like it’s a gift just to have someone to tellthanks.“I only mentioned it to you because you were curious, but you got everyone else involved, too. It’s a lot more fun this way, more than it would have been just doing it on my own.”“‘Course it is,” Satoru says, nudging him. “Everything’s better when you’re not doing it on your own. And you’ll never have to, s’long as I’m around.”





	i'm far away (on my way back to your door)

**Author's Note:**

> here's the story i wrote for the natsume summer big bang, complete with absolutely lovely art by [cattown](http://www.mayorofcattown.tumblr.com) !

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/183608199@N06/48562451117/in/dateposted-public/)

It happens on his way home. 

After an afternoon spent with his friends at Taki’s house, picking through the horticulture books she produced from the depths of her grandfather’s study and ignoring Isamu every time he leaned into the sitting room to complain about the level of noise, Takashi is carrying back a few magazines for Touko. 

She wants to start a flower garden, she said brightly over breakfast a few days ago, and Takashi wants to help. Naturally, Nishimura jumped on the idea the second he heard about it in homeroom, and by the end of lunch period the rest of their group was in on it, too. 

They spent all day together, learning about things like mulch and fertilizer and frost dates. They have plans, over the weekend, to meet up at the Fujiwara residence and get started on the garden plot. They’re all so _ bright, _Takashi thinks, and so warm. 

He smiles at nothing in particular, the slight weight of the magazines in his hands a reminder. The fat fortune cat trundling along at his feet heaves a put-upon sigh. 

“You’re thinking unnecessary things again, aren’t you?”

“Don’t you complain,” Takashi says mildly. “Taki gave you three pieces of strawberry shortcake. You should be the happiest monster in town.”

Predictably, Nyanko-sensei bristles with offense. Takashi tries not to smile. 

But before either of them can get another word in, a sudden shriek cuts through the still evening air. 

Takashi stumbles, alarmed. A middle-aged couple, walking down the street in the opposite direction, give Takashi worried looks. The noise persists, carrying over the countryside in a ringing wail, but they don’t seem to notice. 

“Are you okay?” the man asks, concerned.

“Yes, sir,” Takashi says weakly, tucking the magazines away into his satchel. It’s as if an alarm is going off in his ear, as plain as day, and Nyanko-sensei’s fur is all puffed out in displeasure. “Just— um, just tripped. Excuse me.”

He cuts off the road and into the trees, hopping the underbrush and finding his way unerringly to the path. He’s lived in Hitoyoshi for nearly a year and it only took him half that long to learn his way around all the woods. He could probably walk them blindfolded by now.

“I hope you’re not doing something stupid,” Nyanko-sensei pipes up. He’s moving faster than a fat cat should be able to, keeping pace easily. He has to shout to be heard over the wail, and Takashi raises his voice in turn. 

“I can’t just let it go on,” Takashi snaps. He deliberates at a fork in the footpath before veering to the north, trying to guess the source of the noise reverberating in a disorienting way through the trees. “How on earth do you think you’ll be able to sleep through that tonight?”

Grumbling, Nyanko-sensei transforms. The subsequent cloud of smoke obscures Takashi’s vision for a moment, and when it clears a great golden eye gazes down at him from the head of Madara’s true form. 

“Climb on,” the yokai says, in that voice like a rolling ocean. He makes a big show of impatience, grumbling about stupid humans, but he stays helpfully still as Takashi grips handfuls of downy white fur and hauls himself up. “You’ll owe me for this, Natsume.”

They take off with a powerful surge, heavy wind lifting them up and bearing them over the trees. It drags at Takashi’s shirt and whips through his hair, and he has to squint through the bite of it to see where they’re going. The wailing is _ impossibly _loud, and only seems to get louder with every moment— so, pressing one palm flat to his ear with a wince, Takashi figures they’re headed the right way.

“What do you think it is, sensei?” he shouts over the rush of their flight. “It must be a spirit, but I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

“It’s ticked off, is what it is,” the beast replies. It’s no effort for him to make himself heard in this body. A second later his pace slows, and he dips over a crest of treetops to land in an empty meadow within a sheltered grove. “Stay close, brat.”

They’re deep into the forest, nearly halfway around the mountain, Takashi would guess. He slips from sensei’s back, leaving a steadying hand in the thick fur at his side, and squints around through a budding migraine. 

There are delicate white flowers underfoot, a blanket of them, some of them no bigger than a fingernail. There is a footpath cutting through the middle of the meadow that can’t be more than an hour old, blossoms trampled where someone has trod across them. 

Takashi is just about to point it out when Madara gives a sudden strangled sound and discorporates.

Leaned against him as he was, Takashi is abruptly thrown off balance. Coughing in the smoke, he stumbles forward blindly. The screaming is _ deafening _and his guardian is gone, and he crushes more of those tiny flowers when he trips and lands on his knees. 

Takashi claps his hands over his ears. “Stop!” he cries. “Just talk to me, please! I want to help!”

The screaming abates, but the ringing in Takashi’s ears doesn’t. His eyes are tearing up, and his hands feel like the only things keeping his aching head from splitting apart. Nyanko-sensei is a lucky cat again, laying in the soft grass an arm’s length away. For a brief, tentative moment, there is respite. 

And then, a voice. 

“You’ve ruined it,” it says from somewhere above him. Hoarse and heartbroken, like the wail that guided them here. “Just look at what you’ve done! They’re all crushed and horrible! I loved them and now they’re gone!”

The flowers, Takashi realizes. He tries to lift his head, to face whoever is speaking, but it just makes him dizzy. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries, the words weak and unsubstantial. “I didn’t mean to— “

“What do _ you _ love?” It takes a haughty, petulant turn, like a snubbed child. “I’ll take _ that _ away from _ you _.”

With that, something cool settles over Takashi like a light blanket, wrapping him up in the barest chill of an early August morning. The awful pain in his head recedes enough that he can sit up, the knees of his pants grass-stained and his shirt smudged with dirt. 

He’s alone in the meadow, save his sleeping cat. He gathers Nyanko-sensei into his arms hurriedly and does his best not to tread on any of the flowers on his way back to the trees. It seems the flower spirit had a change of heart, and Takashi isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He might ask Hinoe to come back and help them some other time, but _ he _certainly won’t. He can’t get out of here fast enough. 

With as far as they flew, it is a long, long walk home. He’s half-tempted to call Misuzu and ask for a lift, with sensei out of commission and the stars hanging high and bright in the sky. Touko is going to be _ furious _ with him. 

But the lights are out when he finally makes it to the Fujiwara house. It’s odd, he thinks, that his parents aren’t waiting up for him. He slides the door open quietly, so as not to wake them if they’re sleeping, and murmurs a quiet, “I’m home” for no one’s benefit but his own. 

The stairs are a weary climb after the hours he spent hiking down the mountain and he clings a little desperately to the rail with the hand not cradling Nyanko-sensei to his shoulder.

“You’d better wake up soon, you lazy thing,” Takashi whispers. He hates how heavy and still the creature is, only moving as it breathes. 

There is a chill he can’t shake, even inside. Takashi holds his cat close and takes a breather at the top of the stairs, looking forward to his futon and the space heater Touko set up in the corner of his room. 

As he passes Shigeru’s office door, he’s surprised by the faint light inside, spilling through a crack in the door. 

Shuffling Nyanko-sensei into the crook of one arm, Takashi eases the door open a little further to find his foster father awake at his desk, working through a stack of paperwork by lamplight. 

The lines on his face look deeper, rendering him older, tired. He must have been waiting up after all; Takashi feels another stab of guilt for coming home so late.

Shigeru has always been generous, lenient where even Touko tends to be stern; this man who cleaned out his extra room and opened his home to a stranger, even though it cost him the good opinion of several relatives. When he does get upset— usually over a missed curfew, or a phone call Takashi forgot to give them— his quiet disappointment is harder to stomach than Touko’s worried scolding. 

The two of them are very patient, but it can’t be easy, raising someone like him. Takashi hates the idea that he might make their comfortable lives more difficult every time his secret causes him to stray. 

He takes a single step over the threshold and says, “Sorry, Shigeru-san. I lost track of time.”

He studies his socks for a moment before he finds the courage to lift his head. Shigeru is still bowed over his desk, a frown curving at one side of his mouth, the scratch of his pen the only sound in the room. 

“Shigeru-san?” Takashi tries again, and blinks when his foster father still doesn’t acknowledge him.

Then he realizes Shigeru must be engrossed in the paperwork. Takashi gets that way sometimes, too, swallowed up by the words in his book or the numbers in his homework to the point where he completely misses the nuisance Kitamoto and Nishimura are making of themselves to get his attention. He learned as a child that it’s safer to look busy, to keep his eyes down. It’s not until Tsuji or Sasada lose patience with his friends’ antics and lean over to pat Takashi’s arm or tap the corner of his desk that he remembers he’s not alone. 

Following their example, he reaches out to touch Shigeru’s shoulder. “Shige—“

His fingers pass through the man’s shoulder as easily as a fish passing through a pool of water. 

Takashi yanks them away with a sharp gasp, stumbling a step back. The wall is firm beneath his arm when he leans there for support, and his cat is solid in his hands, but Shigeru turns a page without giving any indication he’s aware of anyone else with him in the room. 

“No,” Takashi says involuntarily, his voice losing its balance and falling out of his mouth on its own. His heart is racing in a painful way, the beat of it frantic up in his throat and his ears. 

He dashes out into the hall, ignoring the burn in his lungs and the stitch in his side, and slides open his foster parents’ bedroom door with enough force that the panes rattle. He’s hoping, absurdly, that the sound will wake Touko, that she’ll sit up and demand to know what he’s doing up so late, why on earth he missed dinner, if he’s aware he’s grounded for the next week—

But she sleeps on, face pale and peaceful, hair a graying brown fan across her pillow. 

Thickly, Takashi says, “Touko-san.” And then, louder, “_ Touko-san _.”

She doesn’t so much as stir. Takashi backs out of the room numbly. His back hits the wall and he slides down it, clutching his cat in his lap for lack of anything else to hold. 

Something white flutters free of him at the motion, a petal coming loose from his hair. It drifts to a landing on the dirty knee of his uniform slacks, snow-white and pristine, like the flowers he left ruined in that meadow. 

_ “What do you love?” _ that yokai said, in a voice broken from all its own misery. _ “I’ll take that away from you.” _

The light in Shigeru’s office goes off. A moment later, Shigeru steps out. He passes Takashi without a single sidelong glance, steps through his open bedroom door, and closes it behind him; leaving Takashi alone in the dark without a word.

❀✿❀

Natsume’s laugh is ridiculous. Satoru thinks he could listen to it all day without getting bored. 

The transfer student— who used to eat lunch by himself behind the equipment shed, and spent free periods napping in unused classrooms, and smiled prettily at everyone who said his name without giving away even a _ hint _of personality— is sitting across the table from him, bickering with Kitamoto over a gardening magazine; grinning petty triumph when Taki interrupts to take his side; laughing aloud when Tanuma confesses that he’s still not sure what the difference is between perennials and biennials but he thinks the hydrangeas look nice. 

Satoru pillows his chin in his hand, content just to watch Natsume sometimes. He’s so different from the overshadowed boy he used to be, that polite ghost that haunted the back of homeroom. And while it has nothing to do with anything any of _ them _did and everything to do with the brave and resilient person Natsume is, Satoru can’t help feeling proud of him, anyway, when he lets himself think about it. 

Isamu stomps into the room with an armful of Nyanko-sensei, shoving him at Tanuma, sitting nearest the door. 

“Keep _ that _ out of the _ fridge,” _Taki’s brother demands. 

Natsume flushes, looking torn between mortification and annoyance, and glares daggers at the smug cat in Tanuma’s hapless hands. Kitamoto can’t quite smother his laughter in time to avoid Natsume glaring at him instead.

“It’s not _ funny, _ ” Natsume says, which is absolutely untrue. “He should know better!” he goes on, as if his cat is at all aware of the consequences of its actions, and even if it was, as if it would _ care. _

Satoru’s cheeks hurt from the width of his smile. He reaches over to snag the magazine out of Natsume’s hands, just to see those lively eyes dart his way. 

“You sure aren’t taking this seriously,” Satoru says, affecting the haughty, disapproving tone he learned from his brother at the tender age of eight. He flips through the pages with a superior air. “Here I thought you wanted to do something nice for Touko, and instead you’re just playing around— “

He’s promptly pelted by cushions, because he hasn’t contributed a single helpful thing in at least half an hour, but it’s worth it when Natsume starts laughing again. 

They’re planning a whole garden; they’re going to get measurements of Natsume’s yard as sneakily as possible, without letting Touko onto what they’re doing, so they can surprise her with a finished plot. 

Natsume was surprised that Satoru was so eager to help, and even more so when the rest of their friends jumped on board right away, but he really shouldn’t have been. The Fujiwaras are at least ninety-nine percent of why he’s doing so much _ better _now, and there’s absolutely no way to repay them for that. There’s no way to say thank you for something so huge and important. 

So doing something nice for them— planting a flower garden for them— that’s exactly the kind of thing Natsume’s friends are going to want to be a part of. 

“Thanks, Nishimura,” Natsume says at some point on the walk home. He’s smiling, soft and sweet, like it’s a gift just to have someone to tell _ thanks. _“I only mentioned it to you because you were curious, but you got everyone else involved, too. It’s a lot more fun this way, more than it would have been just doing it on my own.”

“‘Course it is,” Satoru says, nudging him. “Everything’s better when you’re not doing it on your own. And you’ll never have to, s’long as I’m around.”

Natsume’s smile brightens, until he’s grinning crookedly, stupidly charming, and he waves goodbye with his whole arm when they reach the road where their paths part ways. Satoru feels good about that crooked grin for every single step the rest of the way home. 

He goes to bed that night full to _ bursting _of ideas, of plans for tomorrow. He can’t wait to see Natsume in homeroom. He wants to ask him what flower he liked best out of that magazine, because somehow he forgot to ask at Taki’s house. It’s the last thought on his mind before he falls asleep.

He wakes up without it. 

It’s a disorienting morning, one of those where Satoru lays there staring at the ceiling for a full minute and doesn’t feel fully awake, doesn’t feel fully like himself. His brother pointedly knocking on the wall that separates their rooms— the ‘I heard you silence your alarm, I know you’re awake, you better get up before mom finds out you’re still in bed’ knock— shakes him out of it. 

“Do you have any plans after school?” mom asks by rote, setting breakfast on the table as Satoru and Kiyoshi take their seats. 

Satoru shrugs. “I have classroom duties. Might hang out with Acchan after that.”

“Don’t get into trouble,” she says, giving him the fisheye. “The two of you need someone around to set a better example.”

Satoru can’t imagine needing anyone besides Kitamoto, but he shrugs again in capitulation and drains his miso soup. 

Class will be boring without anyone to pass notes to; at least he’ll get to see his friends at lunch. 

“You haven’t left yet?” Kiyoshi asks twenty minutes later, when Satoru is still standing in the genkan, looking vaguely at the wall. “You’re going to be late unless you run.”

“I’m forgetting something,” he says, frustrated, even as he leans down to tug on his shoes. “Something important.”

“Can’t be that important if you’ve forgotten it,” Kiyoshi reasons, and lets it stand as a goodbye. 

It bothers Satoru all the way to school. He bursts into homeroom with about five seconds to spare, and Nomiya-sensei gives him an arch look that says _ I’m not impressed. _Satoru slinks to his seat with a halfhearted apology, tossing his bag down and sinking into his chair.

And then standing up again, bewildered. 

There are— flowers. Everywhere. A blanket of them, little white blossoms that drift from the places he upset them like dandelion puffs. They cover his desk, and the empty one in front of it that sits between him and Tsuji.

He looks around to see if anyone else has noticed them. Obviously someone must have put them here, but no one is snickering or staring, or even paying him any attention. His desk is in the back corner by the window, so the only person who notices him standing there dumbly is Nomiya-sensei, who gives him another speaking look without pausing from taking attendance. 

Satoru sweeps the petals off his seat, since he can’t think of anything else to do with them, and gathers as many of them as he can into a neat pile in the middle of his desk. He feels bad about the ones that fall to the floor. He has absolutely no idea what’s going on. 

Tsuji is turned around in his seat, as perceptive as a mother bird when it comes to his classmates’ confusion. Satoru darts a wary glance toward the front of the room, deems it safe enough, and holds up a flower so Tsuji can see. 

Tsuji frowns, befuddled. He whispers, “What’s that from?”

Satoru shrugs helplessly. “I just found them here. Do you know— “

“Nishimura, since you’re in such a chatty mood this morning, you can lead the class in our English reading,” Nomiya-sensei says dryly, leaning on his elbows at the lectern. 

His classmates titter, and Tsuji shoots him an apologetic expression, and Satoru stands up at his desk without the usual self-conscious waffle. He’s too confused to feel anything else. There are flowers sticking to his hands and his arms, but no one seems to notice them. Even Tsuji’s eyes slide away from the shock of bright white petals after a moment, as if he’s forgotten they’re there. 

Satoru wishes it were that easy. They seem to be everywhere he is. He finds them in his bag, and on his gym shirt, and he has to pick a few off the package of his melon bread at lunch. 

Taki and Tanuma and Kitamoto are all giving him strange looks. Tanuma is in the middle of extending his bento to let Satoru pick from the croquettes. Taki has a magazine open on her lap that she isn’t reading. Kitamoto says, “What is happening?”

“You see them?” Satoru demands, probably sounding a little bit manic. 

“Wha— of _ course _we see them,” Taki says. “They look just like the one I found on my desk this morning.”

“Oh,” Tanuma says. He digs into his pocket, this shy scarecrow with too-long limbs and too much height to hide the way he’d probably like to half the time. He produces a slightly crumpled flower of his own. “Me, too.”

“Me, three.” Kitamoto has a handful shoved into his bag. “I just figured it was Satchan being an idiot.”

“I barely made it to homeroom before the bell this morning,” Satoru gripes irritably. “You think I woke up early enough to go pick flowers and then plant them around the school just for a prank? Who has time for that?”

“Fair enough,” Taki says. Her auburn hair dips into her eyes, not quite hiding the crease in her forehead as she gazes down at the flowers her friends are holding with something toeing the line between frustration and uncertainty. “I’d like to think maybe it’s a joke someone’s playing, but… for what purpose? What does it mean?”

“That’s a book about flowers, isn’t it?” Kitamoto says, pointing at the magazine on her knee. “Maybe these are in there somewhere.”

It’s a good idea, but a fruitless one. They scour every page, and a few flowers look similar, but none of them match the shape and size of their strange little gifts. 

“Maybe… this one?” Tanuma says uncertainly, hesitating over a picture of plum blossoms. “If the color was a bit paler?”

“No, look,” Satoru says, pointing. “Plum blossom have pistils. Ours don’t.”

“Why do you know flower words?” Kitamoto asks slowly. Then, “Why do _ I _know flower words?”

“We were studying them, weren’t we?” Taki closes the book and just sits there holding onto it for a moment, like understanding will escape if she doesn’t hold onto it. “We were— “

The bell rings, and they’re startled out of their thoughts, back on the rooftop with half-eaten lunches and precious few minutes to get back to class on time. Conversation is aborted in favor of scrambling to gather their things. Satoru stuffs his melon bread away into his bag alongside the books and flower petals, feeling restless and unsatisfied. 

“Taki,” he says as they hurry down the stairs. “Why were we studying flowers?”

“For Fujiwara-san,” she replies, focused on her feet so she doesn’t trip. Looking at her, Satoru wonders— and later he’ll wonder why he wondered, but for now— when did she start eating lunch with them? Where did she even come from? She’s not in Kitamoto’s class, the way Tanuma is, so how’d they even meet? “She wanted to plant a garden, and we were going to help her.”

“Oh,” Satoru says. “Uh, why?”

The Fujiwaras are nice enough, he supposes, but he doesn’t think he’d want to go all out to plant a garden for them. He wouldn’t even want to do that for his own mom. 

At the second landing, Taki pauses long enough to swing blank eyes toward him. “I don’t know.” 

It’s _ weird _that she doesn’t know. That Satoru doesn’t remember. But it’s a passing weirdness, this odd transitory feeling that slips right over him— like a cloud passing over the sun for a few seconds, the day getting darker only barely, only briefly, and then going right back to normal once the cloud has drifted on. It doesn’t stick.

Taki is already chatting brightly about the last trip her brother went on and the souvenirs he brought her. Tanuma is a gentle giant beside her, listening as carefully as he does everything else. Kitamoto is hanging back, watching Satoru. 

“I think I’m gonna go talk to the Fujiwaras after school,” Satoru decides when it’s just the two of them on the stairwell. 

“I think you should,” Kitamoto says. He may not understand the rest of what’s going on, but he’s always understood Satoru. He’s good at understanding people, even when nothing else makes sense. 

Tanuma’s father is back from a business trip, and Kitamoto wants to be home while his own father isn’t well, and Taki always has errands to run since most of her family is still overseas, so it’s shaping up to be a solo mission. Satoru begs off classroom duties until Tsuji agrees to switch days with him and then sets out for a house on the edge of town, a dusting of white flowers on his shoulders and in his hair. 

He’s come this way before, he thinks. The walk is familiar. He must have passed by on his bike. The leaf-strewn path up to the front door is welcoming, and so is the woman who greets him in the entry way. 

“Hello, Satoru-kun,” she says brightly, officially surprising him. And then it stops being _ such _a surprise, because adults are always talking to adults about things, and she probably knows his name from his mother. 

“Um, hello, Fujiwara-san,” he replies lamely. He shuffles a bit, uncertain about this now that he’s standing here. “We— my friends and I— we were wondering if you might need help with a garden?”

It’s her turn to look surprised. “You know, I was just thinking about setting up a plot in my yard! Are you in the gardening club at school? Oh, that’s just wonderful. You’ll have to come inside and tell me all about it.” 

Which is how he finds himself at a table in the sitting room, tea and snacks in front of him. He glances around the room, made a little uncomfortable by how _ comfortable _ he feels here. If someone were to ask him what the place felt like, he’d probably blurt out _ “it feels like home” _and embarrass them both, so it’s for the best that no one asks. 

Fujiwara Touko is a nice lady, but she seems a little lonely. It’s a big house to have to spend all her time alone in while her husband is at work. When she mentions the space heater upstairs that needs to go into storage, how she wishes she could bring downstairs but doesn’t think she’d manage on her own, Satoru is moving before he makes the conscious decision to. 

“I’ll get it for you,” he says at once. “What room is it in?”

She looks surprised that he offers to help, and then grateful, and it reminds him of someone else. After a long moment spent assuring him he absolutely doesn’t have to, eventually she points Satoru in the direction of the stairs. 

“The room at the end of the hall,” she says with a gentle smile. “You’re a good boy, Satoru-kun. I’ll send the leftover snacks home with you, as my thanks.”

Forget moving space heaters, they’re _ definitely _planting this lady a garden. He’ll drag Kitamoto here by the front of his shirt if he has to. 

Heading upstairs, Satoru avoids the step that creaks out of habit. The room in question draws his eye like a magnet. He pushes the sliding door open without hesitation, and expects to find the inside warmly lit, the window pushed open to let in the sweet mountain air. He expects to find someone there. There’s a desk with a handful of books stacked neatly in their shelves, there’s a CD player and a few pretty knickknacks, there’s a cushion and a cat toy, but there is no one to greet him with a crooked smile and green eyes and hair like the wisteria tree Satoru’s neighbors are growing in their backyard—

“Satoru-kun?” Touko calls from the stairs. “Did you find it?”

Jolted from his thoughts, Satoru hurries to grab the space heater by the handle and haul it out. It’s heavy, and it feels wrong to carry it away. It gets cold at night in these old houses. It’ll be cold at night in this bedroom with the heater gone. 

He turns around to close the door and lingers there, with his fingers curled around the cool wood of the recessed handle, reluctant to let go. 

But he can’t stand there in someone else’s house forever. 

Satoru calls Kitamoto on the walk back home. His eyes are itchy, hot with something that he will _ not _admit are tears. His friend picks up on the second ring.

“Call Tanuma,” Satoru says, by way of hello. “I’m heading to Taki’s. Meet me there.” 

Taki’s flowers are pressed carefully between pages of one of her grandpa’s books. Tanuma and Kitamoto’s have fallen apart so they’ve stored them in small glass jars like the ones Touko keeps spices in. Satoru faces his friends, sitting across from Taki and next to Kitamoto with an empty seat between him and Tanuma, and doesn’t know what to say.

He doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain the jumbled mess in his head. Ever since he woke up everything has been _ off-center, _ everything has been _ wrong _ . There was an empty desk in front of his in homeroom, there are flowers in his pockets and stuck to his sleeves, there’s a familiar woman in a familiar old house who smiled at him like she was used to smiling at him, there’s a step on the stairs that creaks, there’s a bedroom without a space heater, there’s _ supposed to be someone with wisteria hair. _

Something nudges against his fingers. It’s Taki, pressing a book into his hands. 

Her eyes are fierce, like flint before the strike that catches fire. “Let’s read,” she says. “Let’s do exactly what we did before. Whatever it is, it must have been important, or we would have forgotten it.” 

“We did forget it,” Kitamoto says, even as he pulls a book out of the pile for himself. 

“Not entirely,” is Tanuma’s soft interjection. “Or we wouldn’t be here.”

“We’ll get it back, Nishimura,” Taki goes on. “Whatever it was, we’ll get it back. Even if it takes forever.”

Satoru nods, absurdly grateful for her understanding and not-so-absurdly comforted by her faith. Especially when, after a few hours of stilted conversation and more horticulture magazines than Satoru has ever wanted to read, they’re no closer to understanding whatever it is that led them here in the first place. 

“Tomorrow,” Kitamoto says, as good as a promise. 

It’s late when they all head home. Satoru is heavy with flowers and borrowed books and questions. He’s a few blocks away from his house, walking alone by now, and he tilts his head back. He can’t see the stars for all the buzzing streetlights, but he can just barely make out the faint crescent of the new moon. 

He heard somewhere that people can make a wish on a new moon. He can almost hear the conversation from the recesses of memory, washing over him like a home video recorded in poor quality, a quiet voice all warm with affection explaining, _ ‘I heard it from a friend. Eight hours after the new moon comes up, you make a wish.’ _

And quite without thinking, Satoru mutters, “Wish you were here.”

A white petal falls right in front of him, brushing against his nose with velvet softness, and he bats it away impatiently. These flowers are beginning to get on his nerves, with their strangeness and their showing up at any random hour of the day— if they’re still floating around and being impossible again tomorrow, he’s shoving the lot of them onto Natsume’s desk and letting _ him _deal with them, because Natsume has the strangest knack for dealing with the strangest—

Satoru stops dead in the middle of the street. The name, when he says it, is a familiar shape in his mouth. 

“Natsume?”

❀✿❀

Takashi opens his eyes to the meadow. Nyanko-sensei is still asleep in the crook of his arm, where he has been since the last time they were here. Ahead of them, stooped to half its height and staring with wounded, hooded eyes, is the spirit that cursed them. 

It’s a small thing when it’s not screaming the mountain down. Takashi gazes back at it, and tries to find anger, tries to find hurt, tries to find something he can use as a weapon in face of the creature who made his world a nightmare to live in.

He can’t find anything but sympathy. 

“I’m sorry about your flowers,” Takashi says gently. “I heard you crying and thought I could help, but I just made it worse.”

It rocks back and forth, aggrieved. It doesn’t seem to know what to make of Takashi. It says, “I took it from you, but you got it back. That’s not fair. It’s not _ fair.” _

Takashi knows that. He knows what it’s like to be alone, to go without. He knows what it’s like to lose the things you want to keep. He knows how wonderfully, absurdly lucky he is to have what he has, these people that stick stubbornly and never go away.

“Will sensei wake up soon?” he asks, because it can’t be left unasked. The spirit jerks its head in a broken facsimile of a nod. “Will I be able to go home now?”

“Yes,” it sobs. “You got it back.”

Takashi doesn’t draw closer, because he knows he isn’t welcome, but he does kneel to look at it from something approaching eye-level. 

“The flowers will grow back,” he promises. “It may take a little time, and a little care, but you’ll be happy again.”

This time, he does call Misuzu. The spirits of Yatsuhara couldn’t interact with him anymore than his human friends could throughout the day, but they spring to his side now. They question the flowers in his hair, knocking them loose and combing them free, and with the curse gone no more will grow to replace them. It’s such a welcome relief to be seen and heard, to pass through their affectionate hands, that Takashi laughs outright when Nyanko-sensei stretches in his arms with a jaw-splitting yawn and demands some peace and quiet. 

When he finally gets home, Touko is waiting there to usher him inside and fuss over the state of his clothes. The space heater is where Nishimura left it in the hall, and Touko insists Takashi bring it back upstairs to his room, so he doesn’t catch cold. She touches the side of his face briefly with the tips of her fingers before he goes, as though she’s so full of fondness she can’t help herself. 

Breakfast the next morning is a busy affair, with Nyanko-sensei getting underfoot and Takashi running late for school and Touko calling him back to the door because he almost left his bento behind. Nishimura is waiting beside Takashi’s desk in their homeroom, tense and unhappy. When Takashi steps through the door, his friend sucks in a gasp and rushes him, eyes bright and hair mussed, clinging to Takashi’s hands hard enough it almost hurts. 

“I had the _ worst _ dream, Natsume,” he says in dismay, gaze darting over Takashi’s face and hair like he’s committing them to memory. “I don’t remember most of it but I know it was the _ worst. _ I think we need to take a raincheck on the garden idea, just for a few days. If I have to look at another flower anytime soon I’m gonna _ lose _it.”

He’s loud and lively, this first friend that Takashi ever made. He holds onto Takashi until the very last second, until Nomiya-sensei comes in and he absolutely has to let go, and even then he does it with bad grace and a sulking expression. 

Nishimura _ always _ holds on until the very last second; that’s how he broke the curse. 

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/183608199@N06/48562308146/in/dateposted-public/)

Takashi will need to think of a way to thank him. For now, he’s content to pass notes under Tsuji’s disapproving eyes, doodling flowers in the margins that make Nishimura mutter in annoyance, alight with being heard, being seen.

Lunch period is spent in the protective cluster of his friends, who have missed Takashi and are relieved to see him, even if they don’t remember why. He sinks into the swell of their noise and chatter and feels like a boat beaching against warm sand, a sailor finally coming home.

He thinks of the little white flowers, crushed by some hapless human who didn’t realize the magnitude of the harm they were doing by simply cutting through a pretty meadow. He understands why that yokai would cling so fiercely to its home. 

Takashi knows how important it is to find goodness and then do everything in your power to keep it. He knows the hurt in being left behind.

Shigeru comes home late from work that night, and the lines on his face are deep and tired. But when he joins Touko and Takashi at the table for dinner, the weight seems to come off him in pounds, as though the company of his family and the warmth of the kitchen is a balm. 

He tousles Takashi’s hair on his way past, a fond smile on his face. He looks at Takashi the way he always does, like he really sees him, and the last clinging petal of fear in Takashi’s heart falls right away. 

“A little bird told me you’re grounded for the week,” Shigeru says, lifting Nyanko-sensei into his lap as Touko fills their plates. “Your friends will be sorry to hear it, but Touko-san and I will be happy to have you home.”

Takashi ducks his head, fighting a pleased smile and losing.

“Me, too,” he says, and means it. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm far away from my home  
finding my way, looking for stars in the storm  
i found some roses to show you  
were growing wild through the floor  
[i'm far away, on my way back to your door](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BprwNkwKLCw)


End file.
